What You Need to Know:

-- Williams led the league in yards per catch in 2019.

-- His catch rate and TD rate fell significantly vs. 2018.

-- Williams’ average target depth climbed, then climbed again last season.

-- The QB change might not be bad for him.

The Williams Rollercoaster

Three years in, we’re still learning what to expect from Williams. And it seems the Chargers might still be learning out to use him.

Williams basically lost his rookie season to a back injury. His top-31 fantasy finish across formats in Year 2 could count as a breakthrough, but Williams did it on a clearly unsustainable 23.3% TD rate while tying for just 64th among wideouts in targets.

Then 2019 brought an over-correction in the TD department. Blame some bad luck. According to Pro Football Focus, Williams saw 12 end-zone targets each of the past 2 years. In 2018, he scored on 7 of those; last year, just 1. In each case, he led all Chargers in end-zone looks.

Outside of the end zone, Williams saw his role shift. He climbed from 12.9% target share to 15.9% (for the 15 games he played), and those targets extended further downfield. According to PFF, Williams saw a 12.04-yard average depth of target in 2017, then 10.38 in 2018 (his 1st full season). That leaped in 2019.

Overall, his 18.27 ADOT ranked 3rd among all players. Williams’ average, though, went from 15.94 in the season’s 1st 8 games to 21.16 over the final 8. Ken Whisenhunt remained the OC for the 1st half of the year. Then he got fired, and Shane Steichen took over for the 2nd half.

Williams’ deeper game helped drop his catch rate -- from 65.2% to 54.4% -- but it also helped him lead the NFL in yards per catch at 20.4.

The wideout also revealed in December that he spent the whole season playing through a lingering knee sprain.

“The knee would just be hurting for like 20 seconds, like the worst pain ever,” he told Daniel Popper of…